Nearly Terminal resonates with a sense of foreboding at what may be seen as the social collapse of the individual self in a society that is being 'whitened out.' Incorporating and intertwining aspects of the personal love relationship with a sense of a self under scrutiny, by itself and an imagined Other, the focus becomes one of loss, solitude, and the existential sense of being in a vast universe that is defined by traces of life increasingly lived as forms of abstraction within a virtual, disembodied reality. With a younger audience in mind, with poetic diction that is not afraid to be bold and experimental in its statements and claims, and with a delicate use of techniques evoking lacunae and erasure to convey the unanswerability of some basic existential questions, Eleni Zisimatos presents a bleak and uncertain view of the world.

Eleni (Helen) Zisimatos is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Vallum Magazine, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award in poetry, and was short-listed for the Robert Kroetsch Award, the Irving Layton Awards (in both poetry and fiction), and the Santa Fe Writers' Awards. She holds degrees in Creative Writing and English Literature, and currently lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Helen Zisimatos' profile page

"Eleni Zisimatos's first collection of poetry ... is a book to read in winter, for the companionship of solitude and the hovering, precarious balance between nostalgia and hope that can make any meditation seem like a Zen koan. -- The Montreal Review of Books, Spring 2020